that every employee of that institution has in his care. If they are
properly conserved the institution will be efficiently administered, and
the visible machinery for conserving them constitutes system. They are
time, property and reputation. A large part of the system under which
any institution is conducted has for its object the utilization of every
bit of time. We Americans, with all our hustling are great wasters of
time. Workers do nothing, not so much in periods of actually shirking or
laziness as in getting started, in passing from one task to another, in
fruitless pottering about, in endeavoring to decide some unimportant
question of detail and in one or another of a thousand different ways
when they seem to themselves to be at work, while they really are doing
nothing useful. As for talking, it is the bane of many different kinds
of work. I am inclined to think that all work should be done in silence.
Possibly, however, this would be a mistake, for an occasional word keeps
workers alive and in good humor where absolute silence is not necessary.
It is, however, difficult to stop with a word. Words group themselves
into phrases, phrases into sentences and sentences into conversation,
and the workers who assert convincingly that they get on exactly as well
while they are talking, succeed in cutting in half, not only their own
sum total of useful achievement, but that of the annoyed toilers
anywhere within earshot. System surely requires close conservation of
valuable time; by promptness, by quickness, by keeping the cobwebs from
one’s brain, and above all, by silence, relative if not absolute.
The property that the librarian is expected to conserve consists of
books--the material in which he works and with which he is expected to
produce his effects, and of money and objects--buildings, furniture and
utensils--intended to aid him in handling the books properly and in
getting them and the users together. The Philadelphia alderman who
proposed to do away with the buildings, furniture and staff of the
library altogether, spend the money for books, dump these on the
city-hall floor, and let the public choose, may have been somewhat crude
in his ideas; but he at least understood that books are the basis of a
library and that librarians and buildings are but subsidiary. His
attitude was vastly more intelligent than that of some persons who
appear to think that a good librarian in a fine building ought to
produce satisfactory results without any books at all. The librarian,
then, must provide above all for the care and preservation of the books.
If his library is on open shelves it must assure careful watch against
thievery; it must insure, by an adequate charging system, the due return
of borrowed volumes; it must see that the physical structure of the book
is protected, and repaired when needful; it must watch and count the
books at intervals to see that they are all on the shelves. This last
means the taking of a regular and careful inventory--the bane of the
average librarian. Yet how can he shirk it? Books are valuable property
entrusted to his care. If he were custodian of money or funds he would
not be let off year after year with the statement that the labor of
ascertaining how much remained in his possession was greater than it was
worth. One may omit to inventory his private collection, just as he may
omit to count the money in his purse, if he chooses, not that of others.
And if it is his duty to see that the quantity of his collection remains
unimpaired, it is equally so to see to the quality. A library system
that counts the books carefully, but esteems a torn and filthy volume as
good a unit as one in proper condition, will no longer pass muster.
There are dirty books on too many library shelves. Such libraries are
deficient in the kind of system that preserves property efficiently. As
for the mechanical plant of the library, the building that houses it,
with its fittings and furniture, a proper system, of course, requires
that these be kept constantly in good condition. Now, we Americans are
impatient of detail: we like to do things in a large way and then let
them take care of themselves. While the Frenchman or the Englishman
watches his roads or pavements day by day and never allows them to get
out of repair, we build expensive roadways and leave them alone until
they are in disgraceful condition--whereupon we tear them up and rebuild
them. While the foreigner builds his cities, stone by stone and street
by street, so that they are picturesque and beautiful, we let ours
spring up as they will, slum jostling palace, and factory elbowing
church, until finally we form grandiose projects of reconstruction,
cutting avenues here and making parts there--projects which may be
carried out and may remain on paper. So I have seen tasteful and
expensive library buildings allowed to grow grimy and dilapidated day by
day through lack of a systematic plan for renovation and repair. Some
day the authorities will wake up and there will be reconstruction and
redecoration in plenty--to be followed by another era of slow decay.
The third entity that an efficient system must enable the librarian to
conserve is evanescent and almost indefinable. It is difficult to bring
system to bear upon it at all, and yet its preservation is of the very
highest importance of all, because without it the librarian cannot do
the work in his community that every good librarian is trying to do.
Reputation is a fickle thing, indeed. Gained sometimes in a happy
moment, it may persist for long years, successfully defying all
assaults; achieved elsewhere by decades of strenuous application and
scrupulous observance, it may vanish in a day as the result of some
petty act of forgetfulness or of the stupidity of a passing moment. None
the less is it the duty of the head of every great institution to strive
continually to attain and maintain it; to increase it if possible and
to guard it jealously. There he is in the hands of his subordinates and
such system as he may bring to bear may and should be directed toward
creating and keeping alive within them a proper _esprit de corps_. The
library that succeeds in creating a public impression that it and all
connected with it are honestly trying to be of public service, to win
public esteem, and to gain a place in the public heart, has two-thirds
of its work done already. Its burden is rolled down hill instead of up.
We boast that in our country public opinion is all powerful; but we are
often apt to regard public opinion as we do the weather. Its balmy gales
and its destructive vortices, its gentle dews and its devastating
torrents, are alike, we think, beyond our power to regulate. Yet, though
public opinion may be unjust or capricious, it is usually level-headed.
So the library that covets that good reputation which public opinion
alone can give it, must so act as to deserve that good opinion. And as
one broken cog will throw a whole machine out of gear, so one assistant
who does not realize his or her responsibilities in this matter may mar
a library’s reputation, otherwise well-earned. It is hard luck, indeed,
that a librarian, who with the majority of his staff has striven long
and well to earn the public good-will, should see it forfeited by the
thoughtlessness or ill-temper of some one of his staff. This, however,
is the way of our world with its multiple connections. None of us may
live for himself alone; we stand or fall with others, and the smallest
bit of orange peel may bring down the mightiest athlete to the pavement.
How may the librarian, or anyone else, bring system to bear on such an
evanescent thing as this? It is a hard matter, indeed. But can it be
denied that a well-oiled library machine, one that is quickly
responsive to direction and control, one whose parts are as perfect in
themselves and as perfectly connected as may be, is least likely to
suffer from unfortunate accidents? A librarian whose bad judgment--or
whose kindness of heart, perhaps--has misled him into admitting into his
machine one false cog may find to his sorrow that this will slip at the
critical time, betraying both him and the whole engine that he had hoped
to wield for good. Here no one kind of system, no particular detail,
alone suffices, but every detail, every series, every combination
renders the whole fabric of reputation more solid and more secure. I
sometimes think that we Anglo-Saxons are in greater need of the
inspiration and aid that we get from records of past intellectual
achievement than are some other races. For our intellectual heritage
does not come at all from our physical ancestry. We are the intellectual
heirs of the Greeks, the Romans and the Hebrews, not of our own Teutonic
fathers. We can, therefore, not only rely on heredity to maintain our
intellectual level; we must continually drink from the same fountains
through which our fathers drew inspiration. We sometimes think a little
contemptuously of what we call the veneer of modern civilization that
the Japanese have put on, forgetting that our own civilization is in
great part also acquired, although the acquisition is of earlier date.
Moreover, the Japanese have, and retain, intellectual ideals and
achievements of their own, having learned from the West hardly more than
its mechanics and engineering. On the other hand, our mechanical
achievements are our own, our intellectual and esthetic standards are
borrowed. Our intellectual status may thus be compared to the electrical
condition of the trolley wire, which in order that it may furnish its
useful energy to the motor below must itself be supplied at intervals
with this energy from an adjacent feed wire communicating directly with
the source of electrical power. The feed wire in our case is the
library--a collection representing the intellectual energy of all past
ages, springing directly from the powerful brains of the masters of
mental achievement throughout the centuries. Unless we supply our minds
from this, we shall not maintain our intellectual position. Is this the
reason why the popular library has attained with us a development that
it has never reached in Latin countries, whose inhabitants possess
through heredity many of the mental standards of value that our
ancestors borrowed and that we must borrow ever and again from the
records of the past? We may be sure that this is at least a possibility;
and we may be equally sure that the adoption of system, both external
and internal, will facilitate both this and all other functions of the
library. The statement that “the letter killeth and the spirit giveth
life” was never intended to mean that we are to neglect formal and
systematic methods of work. The letter kills only when it is spiritless,
with the spirit to give it life it does well its part, ensuring that the
institution to which it applies shall produce its results, surely,
quietly and effectively, with a minimum of noise and effort and with a
maximum of output. Let no one, then, deride or decry the formation or
the operation of a library machine; we live in an age of machinery--of
machines formed by effective human co-operation, as well as by
interlocking gears and interacting parts. Rudyard Kipling makes his
Scotch engineer see in the relentless motion of his links and pistons
something of that “foreknowledge infinite” in which his Calvinistic
training had taught him to believe and trust. So may we see in library
machinery an aid to the accomplishment of that “far-off divine event”
toward which our whole modern library creation has been and is still
silently, but no less powerfully moving--the bringing into intellectual
relationship of each living human brain within our reach with every
other companionable or helpful human brain, though physically
inaccessible through death or absence. This is the comprehensive ideal
of the librarian; no machinery that may work toward its attainment is
superfluous or inept.
THE EXPLOITATION OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY[11]
Two and a half years ago; or, to be more exact, on January 22, 1909, in
an address at the dedication of the Chestnut Hill Branch of the Free
library of Philadelphia, the present writer used the following words:
“I confess that I feel uneasy when I realize how little the influence of
the public library is understood by those who might try to wield that
influence, either for good or for evil.... So far there has been no
concerted, systematic effort on the part of classes or bodies of men to
capture the public library, to dictate its policy, to utilize its great
opportunities for influencing the public mind. When this ever comes, as
it must, we must look out!...
“Organizations ... civil, religious, scientific, political, artistic ...
have usually let us severely alone, where their influence, if they
should come into touch with the library, would surely be for good ...
would be exerted along the line of morality, of more careful book
selection, of judicial mindedness instead of one-sidedness.
“Let us trust that influences along this line ... if we are to have
influences at all ... may gain a foothold before the opposite forces ...
those of sordid commercialism, of absurdities, of falsities, of all
kinds of self-seeking ... find out that we are worth their
exploitation.”
There have been indications of late that the public, both as individuals
and in organized bodies, is beginning to appreciate the influence,
actual and potential, of the public library. With this dawning
appreciation, as predicted in the lines just quoted, has come increased
effort to turn this influence into the channels of personal or of
business advantage, and it may be well to call the attention of
librarians to this and to warn them against what they must doubtless
expect to meet, in increasing measure, as the years go by. Attempts of
this kind can hope for success only when they are concealed and come in
innocent guise. It is extremely hard to classify them, and this fact in
itself would indicate that libraries and librarians have to deal with
that most ingenious and plausible of sophists, the modern advertiser.
But in the first place I would not have it understood that the use of
the library for advertising purposes is necessarily illegitimate or
reprehensible. If it is open and above board and the library receives
proper compensation, the question resolves itself into one of good
taste. The taste of such use may be beyond question, or it may be very
questionable indeed. Few would defend the use of the library’s walls or
windows for the display of commercial advertising; although the money
received therefor might be sorely needed. On the other hand, the issuing
of a bulletin paid for wholly or in part by advertisements inserted
therein is approved by all, though most librarians doubtless prefer to
omit these if the expense can be met by other means. Under this head
come also the reception and placing on the shelves of advertising
circulars or catalogs containing valuable material of any kind. Here the
library gets considerably more than its _quid pro quo_, and no librarian
has any doubt of the propriety of such a proceeding.
Again, where the advertising takes the form of a benevolent sort of
“log-rolling,” the thing advertised being educational and the _quid pro
quo_ simply the impulse given to library use by anything of this nature,
it is generally regarded as proper. Thus most libraries display without
hesitation advertisements of free courses of lectures and the like. When
the thing advertised is not free, this procedure is more open to doubt.
Personally I should draw the line here, and should allow the library to
advertise nothing that requires a fee or payment of any kind, no matter
how trifling or nominal and no matter how good the cause.
These things are mentioned only to exclude them from consideration here.
The library is really exploited only where it is used to further
someone’s personal or business ends without adequate return, generally
with more or less concealment of purpose, so that the library is without
due realization of what it is really doing. Attempts at such
exploitation have by no means been lacking in the past. Take if you
please this case, dating back about a dozen years: An enterprising firm,
operating a department store, offered to give to a branch library a
collection of several thousand historical works on condition that these
should be kept in a separate alcove plainly labeled “The gift of Blank
Brothers.” Nothing so unusual about this. Such gifts, though the
objections to the conditions are familiar to you all, are frequently
offered and accepted. In this instance, however the name of the branch
happened to be also the name of the enterprising firm. The inference
would have been overpowering that the branch had been named after the
firm. The offer was accepted on condition that the books should be
shelved each in its proper place with a gift label, to be of special
form if desired, and that the donation should be acknowledged on the
bulletin board. These conditions were not acceptable--a sufficient
indication of the real object of the gift. Other cases might be cited,
to say nothing of the usual efforts to induce the library to display
commercial notices or to give official commendation to some book.
Several cases of the more ingenious attempts at exploitation having come
to my notice during the past few months I set myself to find out whether
anything of the kind had also been noted by others. Letters to some of
the principal libraries in the country elicited a variety of replies.
Some librarians had noted nothing; others nothing more than usual. One
said frankly that if the people had been “working” him he had been too
stupid to know it. But others responded with interesting instances, and
one or two, in whose judgment I have special confidence agreed with me
in noticing an increase in the number of attempts at this kind of
exploitation of late.
I may make my meaning more clear, perhaps, by proceeding at once to cite
specific instances which must be anonymous, of course, in accordance
with a promise to my informants.
A photographer offered to a public library a fine collection of
portraits of deceased citizens of the town. This was accepted. The
photographer then proceeded to send out circulars in a way that rendered
it very probable that he was simply using the library’s name to increase
his business.
A commercial firm, which had issued a good book on a subject connected
with its business, offered to print for various libraries, at its own
expense, a good list of works on this subject on condition that it
should be allowed to advertise its own book on the last page. Submission
of a proof revealed the fact that this advertisement was to be printed
in precisely the same form and with the same kind of heading as
information about the library given on the preceding page. The reader’s
inference would have been that the matter on the last page was an
official library note. Of the libraries approached, some accepted the
offer without finding any fault with the feature just noted; others
refused to have anything at all to do with the plan; still others
accepted on condition that the last page should be so altered that the
reader could see clearly that it contained advertising matter.
A lecturer gained permission to distribute through a library
complimentary tickets to a free lecture on an educational subject. When
these arrived, the librarian discovered that the announcement of the
free lecture was on the same folder with advertisements of a pay course.
The free tickets were given out, but the advertisement was suppressed.
Efforts of this kind are perhaps particularly noticeable in connection
with the use of library assembly-rooms. There is no reason, of course,
why libraries should not rent out these rooms in the same way as other
public rooms, but it is usual to limit their use to educational purposes
and generally to free public entertainments. Some efforts to circumvent
rules of this kind are interesting.
Application was made to a library for the use of an assembly-room for a
free lecture on stenography. On cross-examination the lecturer admitted
that he was a teacher of stenography who desired to form a class, and
that at the close of his lecture he intended to make announcement of his
courses, prices, etc. He was told that this must be done outside the
library.
It is very common, where the exaction of an admission fee is forbidden,
to take up a collection before or after the lecture. When told that this
is inadmissible, the lecturer sometimes takes up his collection on the
sidewalk outside. There have been cases where employees of a library
have embraced this opportunity to gather contributions. A colored
janitor of a branch library was recently admonished for standing outside
his own assembly-room door and soliciting money for a pet charity.
Another janitor made a pilgrimage to the central library to collect from
the staff. A classic instance of this kind is that of the street gamin
who for several hours stood at a branch library door and collected an
admission fee of one cent from each user. The branch was newly opened
and its neighbors were unused to the ways of free libraries.
An example of the difficulty of deciding, in matters of this kind,
whether an undoubted advertising scheme may or may not legitimately be
aided by the public library is found in the offer, with which all of you
are familiar, of valuable money prizes for essays on economic subjects,
by a firm of clothiers. The committee in charge of the awards is
composed of eminent economists and publicists; the competitors are
members of college faculties and advanced graduate students; the essays
brought out are of permanent value and are generally published in book
form. Under these circumstances many libraries have not hesitated to
post the announcements of the committee on their bulletin boards. Others
regard the whole thing as purely commercial advertisement and refuse to
recognize it. One library at least posted the announcement of the
competition for 1910, but refused to post the result. It would be hard
to tell just how much altruism and how much selfishness we have here and
the instance shows how subtle are the gradations from one motive to the
other.
Advertising by securing condemnatory action of some sort, such as
exclusion from the shelves, has also not been uncommon. This requires
the aid of the press to condemn, abuse or ridicule the library for its
action, and so exploit the book. The press, I grieve to say, has fallen
a victim to this scheme more than once and has thereby given free use of
advertising space ordinarily worth thousands of dollars. A flagrant
instance of this kind occurred in one of our greatest cities about ten
years ago. The work of a much-discussed playwright was about to be put
upon the boards. A wily press agent, in conversation with an
unsuspecting librarian, obtained an adverse opinion. The aiding and
abetting newspaper, which was one of ostensible high character,
proceeded at once to heap ridicule and contumely on the library and the
librarian for their condemnation and exclusion of the play (which really
wasn’t excluded at all). The matter, having reached the dignity of news,
was taken up by other papers and for a week or more the metropolitan
press resounded with accusation, explanation, recrimination and comment.
The gleeful playwright cabled objurgations from London, and the press
agent, retiring modestly into the background, saw advertising that would
have cost him $100,000, at the lowest estimate, poured into his willing
lap by the yellow, but easy, press of his native burg. It is possibly
unfair to cite this as an attempt to “work” the library--it was the
public press that was ingeniously and successfully exploited through the
library.